Swan Song by Robert R. McCammon
Sister sat listening to the shriek of the wind. Artie made another gasp of pain in his sleep, his fingers pressed to his side. From off in the distance came the thin, high howling of a wolf, the sound quavering like a violin note. Sister touched the glass circle through the duffel bag’s canvas and turned her thoughts toward tomorrow.
Behind the green curtain, Paul Thorson opened the footlocker and picked up the .357 Magnum. It was a heavy gun, blue-black, with a rough dark brown grip. The gun felt as if it had been made for his hand. He turned the barrel toward his face and peered into its black, dispassionate eye. One squeeze, he thought, and it would all be over. So simple, really. The end of a fucked-up journey, and the beginning of ... what?
He drew a deep breath, released it and put the gun down. His hand came up with a bottle of scotch, and he took it to bed with him.
36
JOSH DUG THE GRAVE with a shovel from Leona Skelton’s basement, and they buried Davy in the back yard.
While Leona bowed her head and said a prayer that the wind took and tore apart, Swan looked up and saw the little terrier sitting about twenty yards away, its head cocked to one side and its ears standing straight up. For the last week, she’d been leaving scraps of food for it on the porch steps; the dog had taken the food, but he never got close enough for Swan to touch. She thought that the terrier was resigned to living off scraps, but it wasn’t enough of a beggar yet to fawn and wag its tail for handouts.
Josh had finally taken his bath. He could’ve sewn a suit from the dead skin that peeled away, and the water looked like he’d dumped a shovelful of dirt into it. He had washed the crusted blood and dirt away from the nub where his right ear had been; the blood had gotten down deep into the canal, and it took him a while to swab it all out. Afterward he realized he’d only been hearing through one ear; sounds were startlingly sharp and clear again. His eyebrows were still gone, and his face, chest, arms, hands and back were striped and splotched with the loss of black pigment, as if he’d been caught by a bucketful of beige paint. He consoled himself with the idea that he resembled a Zulu warrior chieftain in battle regalia or something. His beard was growing out, and it, too, was streaked with white.
Blisters and sores were healing on his face, but on his forehead were seven small black nodules that looked like warts. Two of them had connected with each other. Josh tried to scrape them off with his finger, but they were too tough, and the pain made his entire skull ache. Skin cancer, he thought. But the warts were just on his forehead, nowhere else. I’m a zebra toadfrog, he thought—but those nodules for some reason disturbed him more than any of his other injuries and scars.
He had to put his own clothes back on because nothing in the house would fit him. Leona washed them and went over the holes with a needle and thread, but they were in pretty sorry shape. She did supply him with a new pair of socks, but even those were much too tight. Still, his own socks were bags of holes held together with dried blood, totally useless.
After the body was buried, Josh and Swan left Leona alone beside her husband’s grave. She gathered a threadbare brown corduroy coat around her shoulders and turned her face from the wind.
Josh went to the basement and began to prepare for the journey they’d agreed on. He brought a wheelbarrow upstairs and filled it with supplies—canned food, some dried fruit, petrified corn muffins, six tightly sealed Mason jars full of well water, blankets and various kitchen utensils—and covered the whole thing with a sheet, which he lashed down with heavy twine. Leona, her eyes puffy from crying but her spine rigid and strong, finally came in and started packing a suitcase; the first items to go in were the framed photographs of her family that had adorned the mantel, and those were followed by sweaters, socks and the like. She packed a smaller bag full of Joe’s old clothes for Swan, and as the wind whipped around the house Leona walked from room to room and sat for a while in each one, as if drawing from them the aromas and memories of the life that had inhabited them.
They were going to head for Matheson at first light. Leona had said she’d take them there, and on their way they’d pass across a farm that belonged to a man named Homer Jaspin and his wife Maggie. The Jaspin farm, Leona told Josh, lay about midway between Sullivan and Matheson, and there they would be able to spend the night.
Leona packed away several of her best crystal balls, and from a box on a closet shelf she took out a few yellowed envelopes and birthday cards—“courting letters” from Davy, she told Swan, and cards Joe had sent her. Two jars of salve for her rheumatic knees went into her suitcase, and though Leona had never said so, Josh knew that walking that distance—at least ten miles to the Jaspin farm—was going to be sheer torture for her. But there were no available vehicles, and they had no choice.
The deck of tarot cards went into Leona’s suitcase as well, and then she picked up another object and took it out to the front room.
“Here,” she told Swan. “I want you to carry this.”
Swan accepted the dowsing rod that Leona offered her.
“We can’t leave Crybaby here all alone, can we?” Leona asked. “Oh, my, no. Crybaby’s work isn’t done yet—not by a far sight!”
The night passed, and Josh and Swan slept soundly in beds they were going to regret leaving.
He awakened with gloomy gray light staining the window. The wind’s force had died down, but the window glass was bitterly cold to the touch. He went into Joe’s room and woke Swan up, and then he walked out into the front room and found Leona sitting before the cold hearth, dressed in overalls, clodhoppers, a couple of sweaters, the corduroy coat and gloves. Bags sat on either side of her chair.
Josh had slept in his clothes, and now he shrugged into a long overcoat that had belonged to Davy. During the night, Leona had ripped and resewn the shoulders and arms so he could get it on, but he still felt like an overstuffed sausage.
“I guess we’re ready to go,” Josh said when Swan emerged, carrying the dowsing rod and clad in a pair of Joe’s blue jeans, a thick, dark blue sweater, a fleece-lined jacket and red mittens.
“Just a minute more.” Leona’s hands were clamped together in her lap. The windup clock on the mantel was no longer ticking. “Oh, Lordy,” she said. “This is the best house I’ve ever lived in.”
“We’ll find you another house,” Josh promised.
A wisp of a smile surfaced. “Not like this one. This one’s got my life in its bricks. Oh, Lordy ... oh, Lordy ...” Her head sank down into her hands. Her shoulders shook, but she made no sound. Josh went to a window, and Swan started to put her hand on Leona’s arm, but at the last second she did not. The woman was hurting, Swan knew, but Leona was preparing herself, too, getting ready for what was to come.
After a few minutes, Leona rose from her chair and went to the rear of the house. She returned with her pistol and a box of bullets, and she tucked both of those under the sheet that covered the wheelbarrow. “We might need those,” she said. “Never can tell.” She looked at Swan, then lifted her eyes to Josh. “I think I’m ready now.” She picked up the suitcase, and Swan took the smaller bag.
Josh lifted the wheelbarrow’s handles. They weren’t so heavy now, but the day was fresh. Suddenly Leona’s suitcase thumped to the floor again. “Wait!” she said, and she hurried into the kitchen; she came back with a broom, which she used to sweep ashes and dead embers from the floor into the hearth.
“All right.” She put the broom aside. “I’m ready now.”
They left the house and started in a northwesterly direction, through the remains of Sullivan.
The little gray-haired terrier followed them at a distance of about thirty yards, his stubby tail straight up to balance against the wind.
37
DARKNESS FOUND THEM SHORT of the Jaspin farm. Josh tied the bull’s-eye lantern to the front of the wheelbarrow with twine. Leona had to stop every half hour or so, and while she laid her head in Swan’s lap, Josh gently massaged her legs; the tears Leona was weeping from the pain in her rh
The lantern’s beam fell upon a rail fence about four feet tall and half blown down by the wind. “I think we’re near the house!” Leona offered.
Josh manhandled the wheelbarrow over the fence, then lifted Swan over and helped Leona across. Facing them was a black cornfield, the diseased stalks standing as high as Josh and whipping back and forth like strange seaweed at the bottom of a slimy pool. It took them about ten minutes to reach the far edge of the field, and the lantern’s beam hit the side of a farmhouse that had once been painted white, now splotched brown and yellow like lizard’s skin.
“That’s Homer and Maggie’s place!” Leona shouted against the wind.
The house was dark, not a candle or lantern showing. There was no sign of a car or truck anywhere around, either. But something was making a loud, irregular banging noise off to the right, beyond the light’s range. Josh untied the lantern and walked toward the sound. About fifty feet behind the house was a sturdy-looking red barn, one of its doors open and the wind banging it against the wall. Josh returned to the house and aimed the light at the front door; it was wide open, the screen door unlatched and thumping back and forth in the wind as well. He told Swan and Leona to wait where they were, and he entered the dark Jaspin farmhouse.
Once inside, he started to ask if anyone was home, but there was no need. He smelled the rank odor of decomposing flesh and almost gagged on it. He had to wait for a moment, bent over a decorative brass spittoon with a dead bunch of daisies in it, before he was sure he wouldn’t throw up. Then he began to move through the house, sweeping the light slowly back and forth, looking for the bodies.
Outside, Swan heard a dog barking furiously in the black cornfield they’d just come through. She knew that the terrier had shadowed them all day, never coming closer than twenty feet, darting away when Swan bent down to summon it nearer. The dog’s found something out there, Swan thought. Or ... something’s found it.
The barking was urgent—a “come see what I’ve got!” kind of bark.
Swan set her bag down and leaned Crybaby against the wheelbarrow. She took a couple of steps toward the black, swaying cornfield. Leona said, “Child! Josh said to stay right here!”
“It’s all right,” she answered. And she took three more steps.
“Swan!” Leona warned when she realized where the little girl was heading; she started to go after her, but immobilizing pain shot through her knees. “You’d best not go in there!”
The terrier’s barking summoned Swan, and she stepped into the cornfield. The black stalks closed at her back. Leona shouted, “Swan!”
In the farmhouse, Josh followed the beam of light into a small dining area. A cupboard had been flung open, and the floor was littered with chips and pieces of shattered crockery. Chairs had been smashed against the wall, a dining table hacked apart. The smell of decay was stronger. The light picked out something scrawled on the wall: ALL SHALL PRAISE LORD ALVIN.
Written in brown paint, Josh thought. But no, no. The blood had run down the wall and gathered in a crusty little patch on the floor.
A doorway beckoned him. He took a deep breath, straining the horrid smell through his clenched teeth, and walked through the doorway.
He was in a kitchen with yellow-painted cupboards and a dark rug.
And there he found them.
What was left of them.
They had been tied to chairs with barbed wire. The woman’s face, framed with blood-streaked gray hair, resembled a bloated pincushion punctured by an assortment of knives, forks, and the little two-pronged handles that stick into the ends of corn on the cob. On the man’s bared chest someone had drawn a target in blood and gone to work with a small-caliber pistol or rifle. The head was missing.
“Oh ... my God,” Josh croaked, and this time he couldn’t hold back the sickness. He stumbled across the kitchen to the sink and leaned over it.
But the lantern’s light, swinging in his hand, showed him that the sink’s basin was already occupied. As Josh shouted in terror and revulsion the hundreds of roaches that covered Homer Jaspin’s severed head broke apart and scurried madly over the sink and coun-tertop.
Josh staggered backward, the bile burning in his throat, and his feet slipped out from under him. He fell to the floor, where the dark rug lay, and felt crawling things on his arms and legs.
The floor, he realized. The ... floor ...
The floor around the bodies was an inch deep in surging, scrambling roaches.
As the roaches swarmed over his body Josh had a sudden ridiculous thought: You can’t kill those things! Not even a nuclear disaster can kill ’em!
He leaped up from the floor, sliding on roaches, and started running from that awful kitchen, swatting at the things as he ran, swiping them off his clothes and skin. He fell to the carpet in the front room and rolled wildly on it, then he got up again and barreled for the screen door.
Leona heard the noise of splintering wood and ripping screen, and she turned toward the house in time to see Josh bring the whole door with him like a charging bull. There goes another screen door, she thought, and then she saw Josh fling himself to the ground and start rolling, swatting and squirming as if he’d run into a nest of hornets.
“What is it?” she called, hobbling toward him. “What the hell’s wrong with you?”
Josh got up on his knees. He was still holding the lantern, while the other hand flopped and flipped here and there all over his body. Leona stopped in her tracks, because she’d never seen such terror in human eyes in her life. “What ... is it?”
“Don’t go in there! Don’t you go in there!” he babbled, squirming and shaking. A roach ran over his cheek, and he grabbed it and flung it away with a shiver. “You stay out of that damned house!”
“I will,” she promised, and she peered at the dark square where the door had been. A bad odor reached her; she’d smelled that reek before, back in Sullivan, and she knew what it was.
Josh heard a dog barking. “Where’s Swan?” He stood up, still dancing and jerking. “Where’d she go?”
“In there!” Leona pointed toward the black cornfield. “I told her not to!”
“Damn!” Josh said, because he’d realized that whoever had done such a job on Homer and Maggie Jaspin might still be in the area—maybe was even in that barn, watching and waiting. Maybe was out in that field with the child.
He dug the pistol and the box of bullets out of the wheelbarrow and hurriedly slid three shells into their cylinders. “You stay right here!” he told Leona. “And don’t you go in that house!” Then, lantern in one hand and pistol in the other, he sprinted into the cornfield.
Swan was following the terrier’s barking. The sound ebbed and swelled with the wind, and around her the long-dead cornstalks rustled and swayed, grabbing at her clothes with leathery tendrils. She felt as if she were walking through a cemetery where all the corpses were standing upright, but the dog’s frantic summons pulled her onward. There was something important in the field, something the dog wanted known, and she was determined to find out what it was. She thought the barking was off to the left, and she began to move in that direction. Behind her, she heard Josh shout, “Swan!” and she replied, “Over here!” but the wind turned. She kept going, her hands up to shield her face from the whipping stalks.
The barking was closer. No, Swan thought, now it was moving to the right again. She continued on, thought she heard Josh calling her again. “I’m here!” she shouted, but she heard no reply. The barking moved again, and Swan knew the terrier was following something—or someone. The barking said, “Hurry! Hurry, come see what I’ve found!”
Swan had taken six more steps when she heard something crashing toward her through the field. The terrier’s voice got louder, more urgent
She saw something coming toward her through the corn—something not human, something huge. She couldn’t make out its shape, or what it was, but she heard a rumbling noise and backed away, her heart about to hammer through her chest. The huge, misshapen thing was coming right at her, faster and faster now, cleaving right through the dead, swaying stalks, and in another few seconds it would be upon her. She wanted to run, but her feet had rooted to the ground, and there was no time, because the thing was crashing at her and the terrier was barking an urgent warning.
The monster tore through the cornstalks and towered over her, and Swan cried out, got her feet uprooted and stumbled back, back, was falling, hit the ground on her rear and sat there while the monster’s legs pounded toward her.
“Swan!” Josh shouted, bursting through the stalks behind her and aiming his light at what was about to trample her.
Dazzled by the light’s beam, the monster stopped in its tracks and reared up on its hind legs, blowing steam through its widened nostrils.
And both Swan and Josh saw what it was.
A horse.
A piebald, black-and-white blotched horse with frightened eyes and oversized, shaggy hooves. The terrier was yapping tenaciously at its heels, and the piebald horse whinnied with fear, dancing on its hind legs for a few seconds before it came down again inches from where Swan sat in the dirt. Josh hooked Swan’s arm and yanked her out of harm’s way as the horse pranced and spun, the terrier darting around its legs with undaunted courage.
Swan was still shaking, but she knew in an instant that the horse was more terrified. It turned this way and that, confused and dazed, looking for a way of escape. The dog’s barking was scaring it further, and suddenly Swan pulled free from Josh and took two steps forward, almost under the horse’s nose; she lifted her hands and clapped her palms together right in front of the horse’s muzzle.